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Thanks for your comment. I agree with Shanta that democracy by itself does not resolve these problems. New evidence in Freund and Jaud (2013) suggests that countries which transitioned to democracy experienced improvements in voice and accountability relatively quickly, as well as improvements in education enrollment and health performance. Importantly, countries with successful and quick transitions are more stable and less likely to fall into conflict than countries with failed transitions. However, the broader governance indicators, including rule of law, control of corruption, government effectiveness or the quality of regulation, stagnated right after transition and improved very slowly.

Freund and Jaud (2013) can be found http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP9282.asp